Class of 2019 demographics match broader trends

As freshmen settle in for their first week of classes, members of the Class of 2019 might notice that they’re in quite a diverse group of students.

Eleven percent of the incoming freshmen class is Asian, an amount that bolsters GW’s goal to double its international population by 2023. Colleges that are dependent on tuition for most of their revenue, like GW, have increasingly looked toward attracting international students, who can usually pay full tuition to attend college in the United States.

GW’s total undergraduate population of Asian students stayed nearly the same from 2004 to 2014, according to the Office of Institutional Research and Planning. In 2004, 9 percent of undergraduate students identified as Asian, and that decreased by just 0.2 percent a decade later.

Less than 1 percent of GW’s incoming freshmen class is Native American, a number that mirrors a University-wide total of 61 students, or 0.2 percent of the undergraduate population in 2014. That number has not been greater than 1 percent in the last decade.

The Class of 2019 also saw a 4 percent increase in the share of female students from last fall. Greater than 60 percent of the Class of 2019 identify as female. Nationwide, the number of women in college increased by 25 percent between 2002 and 2012, according to the National Center of Education Statistics.